Branches
by Empatheia
Summary: -Naruto- His dreams are rarely gentle things.


_**Branches**_

It isn't fair, really.

Naruto spends most of his waking moments thinking about how to solve the Problem of Sasuke, when he isn't fighting for his life or the life of his friends or trying to land a date with Sakura. He shouldn't have to spend his rare and fitful hours of sleep on it, too.

And yet, he hardly ever dreams about anything else. His mind plays out all the scenarios it can concoct, from plausible to ridiculous, golden happy ending to miserable tragedy, and every stop between. He remembers Sasuke coming home in one piece, forgiven. He remembers Sasuke coming home in pieces, condemned. He remembers strangling the light out of Sasuke's eyes with his own hands. He remembers holding his friend as he wept, just a broken child again at the end.

Too many memories. After all these dreams, the real ending might even seem a bit anticlimactic, and that would _really_ be unfair. They haven't come all this way to go out with a whimper.

He wonders what Sasuke's dreams look like now. He assumes they've been full of Itachi for years, but now Itachi is gone; that battle is over and won. Maybe he still dreams of Itachi anyway, because the ruts in his mind must be worn deep by now. Maybe it still plays out pathways whose forks passed three leagues back, showing him futures in which Itachi's hold on that most closely guarded truth slips too early and Sasuke has time enough to slow his charge and drop his sword, or in which Itachi comes back on his own, tired of running, ready to face up to the consequences of his heroism. Futures where it's not too late for things to go right.

Or worse, futures in which things go even more badly than already have in the waking world.

Naruto wonders if he shows up in them at all. If he doesn't, that would be another unfair thing, but then… the world is full of those.

But if there is a place for him in Sasuke's dreaming world, what does he look like? What does he say? Who does Sasuke see when he looks at Naruto through those poisoned, bloodied lenses? A friend? A hindrance? Some confused hybrid of both, too close to run from? Or just an annoyingly obstinate talking obstacle?

_That_ sounds about right. Despite himself, he laughs a bit.

He makes a point of laughing at things whenever he can. He needs to, because he can feel his soul eroding every day under the weight of everything he's not strong enough to do yet. If he forgets to laugh, it will happen faster, and there will be nothing left but a pile of sand by the time anything of real importance gets done.

It's hard to find things worth laughing at, though, sometimes, and it gets harder every day.

Sakura's dreams look a lot like his. He knows, because he asked her once, and she was close enough to the edge of despair to tell him. She doesn't seem to find it easy to laugh anymore, either.

Maybe if he gets a chance someday soon, he'll ask Kakashi what his are like. Naruto suspects that they brim with guilt and fire, and not just the ones about Sasuke.

He doubts any of them have many good dreams. He doubts he knows anyone at all who has many good dreams. The shinobi of Konoha are its providers and protectors, but there is a price to pay for the wealth and security they exist to create. That price is nightmares, and the loss of kinder things.

They are all willing to pay it. That doesn't mean they don't miss what they have lost.

Naruto will gladly continue to die once or twice a night if it means protecting what he has chosen to love. If it means having the strength to pull his best friend back from the brink of perdition, he'll spend every night suffering every future he might ever have to face, over and over again, without a single word of complaint.

Sakura and Kakashi never complain, either.

Reluctantly, he thinks of Itachi now, and knows that _his_ dreams would throw a shadow broad and dark enough to swallow all of theirs combined. Not a word. Not a single word from him, because Sasuke and the village that raised him were worth more than the small comfort of confession.

Naruto had never thought he'd look up to the person who destroyed Sasuke's life, but if ever there was someone strong enough to pay the unthinkable prices, it was Itachi, and there might not ever be another like him until the ending of the era of men. He had paid, and paid, and paid, until his very soul was torn to rags and parcelled out to the world, until there was only enough left of himself to keep breathing until that one moment when he could finally let go and vanish, the moment he'd been waiting years to find.

It would be easier to know a person, he thinks, if he could just reach inside them and look at their dreams, at all the strange futures their minds could envision and at which ones they favoured most.

Perhaps it's better that he can't. His nightmares hurt enough on their own.

But given the choice, he would still dream, because in his dreams the chance that he will find a way through the thorns and ice and seas of blood to Sasuke's side is just that little bit higher, and he'll take what he can get even if it's not quite real. Anything. He'll take _anything_ if it will sustain him long enough to find that moment he is searching for, like Itachi searched for his. Even the nightmares. Even the good dreams, which are so much worse because of how they contrast with reality when he wakes up.

Anything. Any price.

He cannot (and _will_ not) let Sasuke burn alone.

**~O~**


End file.
